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Save St Luke’s
• I WAS very surprised to learn, before Christmas, that the Camden and Islington NHS Foundation Trust has no facility within its standing orders to receive a petition from the public.
As this trust deals with mental health and social care, it seems particularly unfortunate that it cannot receive a petition from its vulnerable service users.
At the trust’s board meeting on December 18, I approached the chairman and gave him the petition on St Luke’s Hospital. There then followed a strange silence where the board refused to allow me even one minute to put the case in the petition, on behalf of Camden Mental Health Consortium.
Democracy appears lost in the new world of Foundation Trusts.
The issue was the closure of adult psychiatric beds at St Luke’s Hospital, proposed for summer 2009. Trust officials say this was consulted on in a “bed strategy” document, but this does not seem adequate for the closure of a place like St Luke’s.
If you have to be in a psychiatric hospital, St Luke’s is the best environment for one. It is quiet and leafy – quite different from the urban environment at St Pancras Hospital, where the trust proposes to relocate the beds.
St Luke’s has been a psychiatric hospital for 200 years. Some of its buildings are listed, and we are investigating whether there are deeds to require continuing use as a hospital.
We fear that the trust will sell it off at some stage, losing a facility which service users have valued for many years.
The petition remains ongoing. Contact admin@cmhc.org.uk for a copy.
CLLR PENNY ABRAHAM
Camden Mental Health Consortium
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